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"At the moment we are not able to quote the exact price for the MOVIEtube PRO and the MOVIEtube LT"
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hmmmmm.....

Just saw the Movietube site, looks and sounds slightly expensive, i'm going to take a guess at around $1000-$1500 for the LT version and probably around $2k+ for the Pro (just based on how the prototype looks)... but still, probably much less than the $8-16k for the P+S Technick mini35 package. Unfortuatly it's not compatable with the XL1s, which is ideal for light sensitive imagery-infact it looks like the XL1 bodystyle in general. Still pound for pound the Agus35 (not Argus) seems to be a winner in the cost department.

Contrary to some opinions, lot's of advancements have been made to the Agus35 since the inception of this thread. almost 850 responses, and almost 50k views and helped to spawn the "static35" thread... btw, I'm not entirely sure how a static glass will work, you'd need a air/dust/hair tight enclosure and a vibrating one might be a bit strange with the noise and probably good not to have too much vibration. hmm... i'm not exacly sure what it is but that microcrystaline glass sounds a bit like a fancy work for ground glass...

There are no new pictures or the adapter, is the same configuration of before, just to show that if you keep it simple it will work jsut fine... Also i replace the 2AA with a 9V batteries so the cd will spin faster.

I'll be sending shortly to Chris, two .pdf files of a rough and ready how-to for a pattern adaptor for Century Optics 16:9 anamorphic to 52mm SLR filter thread lens, specifically the Micro Nikkor 55mm. The fitting illustrated does not accept the Sony PD150 lens hood but a bit more filing and cutting of the adaptor fixes that.

There will also be a .jpg of the Australian Plumbers Version (complete with blue hammertone paint to make it go faster.) and a late evening sunset.

Will hopefully be doing a test/live music video tomorrow. Unfortunately it will be hostile lighting conditions, late afternoon-early evening, sun behind building - shadows and columns, outdoor gazebo and supplementry lighting needed (haven't got any gels), minimal audience hasslement by presence of camera.

Did some furthur tests on the Century Optics - Micro Nikkor combination. From about 6 feet out to infinity images with 16:9 are little different in sharpess in a practical sense from 4:3.

The test pattern tells another story with about a 100 horizontal TV line loss of resolution with test pattern in full frame vertically, which brings it closer to the lens than the 6 feet.

You could be on a hiding to nowhere using motherboard standoffs if my imagining of what you will be doing is where you will take it.

I assume you will use three standoffs as pillars, screwed onto the CD at 120degree centres and tacked with epoxy onto the groundglass disk. Without a centre hole as a reference, getting the thing to balance and run true will be difficult. You would need to build an extremely accurate centering jig to hold the groundglass disk. Eyematching won't be good enough.

There will be three joints on two planes where error can occur. The hub to CD disk face (CD to hub, stand-offs to CD) Glass disk to stand-offs.

Worse, with the glass disk well outboard of the plane of the CD and its hub, the out-of-balance condition will impose loads on the motor shaft and the plastic hub itself which may not fail but may flex and aggravate the out-of-balance.

You may be better served by slipping the spindle hub along the motor shaft towards the end and trimming the hub centre down until it centers the CD disk but does not contact the glass disk. Don't use the standoffs but epoxy the glass disk direct to the CD.

This won't fix the outboard out-of-balance condition relative to the motor but will reduce stresses on the hub itself. The glass disk will tend to gyroscopically self-align but any out-of-balance will shake the motor and throw the alignment off. To fix that you might be able to use a felt tip spirit pen to mark the glass disk as it spins and attempt to balance it with blobs of epoxy placed 180degrees opposite the ink marks and carefully sanded down until balance is achieved.

My practice when mounting the sanded CD disks is to position the motor upright, use water-cleanup silicone bathroom sealer sparingly on the face, place the CD disk on it, turn the CD disk against the hub to evenly spread the sealer, then immediately start the motor and run the assembly until the sealer has stabilised after about 10 to 15 minutes. This nearly fixes any run-out caused by mounting with an ordinary CD but of course doesn't fix a CD which is imperfect. I don't think this method will work when mounting your CD/glass disk combination onto the spindle hub because the glass will still be slightly outboard of the CD-to-spindle centre contact surfaces.

If this is not your intended method, ignore it totally. Posted in the hope of avoiding you some frustration is all.

here's my attempt at one. i got everything working and put it on the camera and i can't seem to focus onto anything, unless it's very far away. is there a way i can fix that? is that what the macroring is for? take a look at the pics and see if there is anything wrong.

Looking at your camcorder side view it is probably too close to the CD disk. I don't know how good the macro on that camera is but it is probably not going to work close coupled like that unless you have another lens on front of it.

Try making a target on a piece of paper. If you want it to be 35mm movie widescreen size gate, draw a rectangle about 21mm wide by 11mm high. If you want the larger gate of the SLR camera the lens came off just copy the size of the gate inside the back of your SLR camera.

Use your zoom and focus to get the camcorder to frame sharply on the paper target. If you can get it all inside your camcorder's own image frame then the distance from the front of your camera to the paper is how far you will have to place the CD from your camera.

You may find you need a close-up lens (macro lens) to fit on front of your camcorder before you can get close enough. For the PD150 between 7x and 10x seems okay. With 7x the camera front to CD distance is about 5.5 inches. Your camcorder may behave differently.

The groundglass you have made looks a bit rough but will work for the time being. You will get a better groundglass if you rub it face down on a clean sheet of scrap glass using some 600 fine grit mixed in some water. You may be able to use something like Jif or Ajax creme cleaner but the abrasives in that stuff while fine are not as well graded so there may be some big bits in it.

Don't press hard on the disk. You'll just have to be patient and wait for the raised outer edge and centre to wear down before the image area will begin to frost over. You can speed things up by sanding the surface on the outer edge and any raised centre down, taking care not to touch the image area.

If you have a look at www.dvinfo.net/media/hart and click on agus1.jpg,, this image will give you an idea of what should be happening on your groundglass CD. (The pressing method of frosting groundglass gave a better result than sanding the disk but was not as good as polishing the disk face-down on a sheet of glass.)